Students Engineer Bacterium That Can Transform Plastic Into CO2 And Water In 24 Hours

It is not a secret that the pollution in the oceans is
threatening marine life and also creating all sorts of problems on the land.
According to research that was recently carried out, it is highly likely that
we will find more plastic as compared to fish in the waters by 2050. That is
why many startups are focusing on ways to come up with solutions to the problem
of pollution. The one approach that we are going to focus on is that of the
bacterium.

The bacterium has been developed by two students, Jeanny Yao
and Miranda Wang. The duo has been working on bacterium since their school
years and is now getting ready to reap the benefits from it. The duo has
already procured all patents and even managed to secure a funding of four
hundred thousand dollars to develop a product at the age of twenty years.

Thanks to the bacterium, they both have already won five
prizes and become quite popular because they are the youngest ever to win the
Perlman science prize. All of this has been made possible because of this small
bacteria that can transform plastic into CO2 and water. The technology can be
used for two purposes; cleaning the beaches and creating raw materials for
clothing.

Miranda Wang said, ‘It is practically impossible to make
people stop using plastic, we need technology to break the material, and
everything becomes biodegradable.’ The development of bacterium has been
comprised of two parts. The first part is where the plastic is dissolved, and
the enzymes catalyze, thus making the plastic become highly malleable
fractions. These components are then housed in a biodigester station where they
act as if they are leftovers of food. The project has to run for only 24 hours
during which it transforms plastic to water.